Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/873

bulletins, most of which have been noticed in this magazine, deal with corn-growing, the examination and care of milk and cream, spraying plants, fruit-growing, tomatoes, insects injurious to plants, the clover rust, and a variety of minor investigations.

An Examination of Fingal's Cave, by J. P. MacLean (Clarke, 75 cents), is an account of this famous cavern enlarged from a report made by Prof. MacLean to the Smithsonian Institution in 1887. The island of Staffa contains several caverns besides the one of chief prominence, and these receive brief mention. The author's description of Fingal's Cave consists mostly of Sir Joseph Banks's account of his visit in 1772, which is inserted in full, and quotations from other sources. The origin of the cave is discussed, and reasons are given for not believing it to be the work of man. The volume is illustrated from drawings by the author and from other sources.

Harper's Sixth Reader (American Book Company, 90 cents) is devoted to British authors, and completes the series to which it belongs. Attention is called by the publishers to the gradation in the several classes of selections as they are herein arranged: those pertaining to modern history occur in chronological order, so also do the articles on Roman life and customs. Among the lessons are views of American institutions from English standpoints, examples of the best of British fiction and humor, and essays on questions of morals and personal duty. While many of the selections are new to school readers, a large number of acknowledged classics are also included. Both the living and the earlier writers are represented. Notes on the author and on the unusual words of each piece are appended.

The paper of Mr. George M. Dawson, of the Geological Survey of Canada, On the Later Physiographical Geography of the Rocky Mountain Region in Canada, is a monograph of a like order of those of which members of our own Geological Survey have produced a large number. Relating to what is virtually an extension into the British Provinces of the identical regions with which our own geologists are concerned, it may be grouped with their special memoirs as constituting one of a mass of materials by the aid of which American geology is being shaped into a more extensive, systematic, and harmonious scheme than has been applied to any other region. The western border region of the continent is defined by Mr. Dawson as being formed by a series of more or less nearly parallel mountain systems, with an average breadth in British Columbia of about four hundred miles, and tending in a direction similar to that of the Pacific shore line, the position of which in fact depends upon that of these orographic features. In traversing this generally mountainous zone — which the author calls the Cordillera belt — from east to west, we cross the Rocky Mountains; what may be classed together as the Gold Ranges (including the Selkirk, Purcell, Cariboo, and other ranges); the Coast Ranges; and an irregular mountain system — the Vancouver system of which Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands are unsubmerged parts. A region between the mountain and the Coast Ranges, without important mountain ranges, is referred to as the Interior Plateau of British Columbia. The paper has special reference to changes in elevation and the history of the Glacial period, and is divided into two parts: I. Mesozoic and Tertiary History; and II. Glacial History.

The Fruits of Culture is a comedy in four acts by Count Leo Tolstoi (Tucker, Boston). It deals with spiritualism, the principal scene being a bogus séance. The characters are Russian nobility, learned persons, servants, and peasants.